[Discuss] Justify your existence

[feenberg at nber.org (Daniel Feenberg)]

On Thu, 15 Dec 2011, Edward Ned Harvey wrote:

> You're in a social situation - at a party or something - You're talking with
> some CFO or otherwise interesting financial person about work, and Dilbert
> cartoons, and the wastefulness and inefficiencies of typical corporations or
> typical organizations, etc.  Somebody uses a term like "overhead" or
> "secondary" referring to support roles.  But you're an IT person - You're a
> support role, and depending on what is your core business, most likely
> you're overhead.
>
>
>
> With only a moment's thought, and only a few words, how do you describe the
> value that your role adds to the organization?  How do you justify your own
> existence, casually, when talking to a CFO or somebody in a social
> situation?

The CFO is overhead too. Overhead means that an expense isn't directly 
allocatable to a particular item sold. It isn't a accounting-speak for 
"non-productive". Is system administration helping the firm reduce costs 
and/or raise output, or is it part of the "Department of Information 
Prevention"? Whether its support or empire-building, it is overhead either 
way.

Daniel Feenberg

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